My lovely little lentils
When I was in high school, I never thought I would end up in South America for 3 months. I took 4 years of Spanish and am starting to realize I should’ve paid more attention during these classes. Even so, I’m remembering a lot more than I imagined! My team and I can hold a decent conversation with children if there are at least 3 of us, we have a dictionary, and all we talk about is animals or colors. It’s a work in progress!
We’ve been in Bogota, Colombia for 2 weeks now, and I still can’t believe I’m here in South America! The time is going by so fast and so slow all at the same time. Since being here, we’ve painted, sanded, spackled, swept, mopped, washed dishes, been to church services, adventured in Bogota, hung out with children and those are just the main highlights!
Here’s the basic breakdown of how we got to Colombia (shout-out to our logistics team for doing a killer job; you guys rock!):
-1/11/16: 2am wake up call
Get to the airport in Atlanta by 4am
Hop a flight to Fort Lauderdale and arrive by 8:30am
Sit in Fort Lauderdale for 12 (yes 12) hours until boarding international flight
Flight to Medellin at 10pm (2 hours later than intended flight time)
-1/12/16: Arrive in Medellin, Colombia at 3am
Get to host house around 5am where there were snacks waiting for us
Hang out in Medellin, found a grocery store and bought snacks
Get to bus station at 9pm for 10+ hour bus ride to Bogota
-1/13/16: Arrive in Bogota, Colombia at 9am and waited for Mama Ruth to pick us up
Take a van to the jeep and then the jeep up the mountain (craziest ride ever!
Spend the day resting and getting to know the hosts
-1/14/16: Have breakfast
Start painting the church
-1/15/16: Go to church service (where we were asked to sing in front on the audience)
Explore Bogota
Also, in case you guys were wondering, it’s not warm here. Not warm in the slightest. Even when we’ve been painting and working, we’ve all had at least 2 pairs of pants with a shirt and jacket. It’s so cold! Most of our other squadmates are in warm climates, but not here in Bogota. We’ve been extremely blessed by our hosts since we’ve been here! We are staying in a room with bunk beds and haven’t had to use our tents at all. One of our hosts, Ruth, even gave us all extra blankets so we wouldn’t be cold at night. We had to use our sleeping pads one night, but that’s a story for another time.
Our squad has 3 squad leaders who travel with us for the first 5 months. They are alumni racers who were called to lead and mentor squads for a short time while they raise up new leaders. I’m super biased, but we have the best squad leaders out of them all: Danae, Cam, and Alissa. Danae traveled to Bogota with my team and has been helping us with ministry all week. It has been great having her here with us because I’m not sure what we would do without her. She is just so funny and a joy to be around. It’s been great getting to know her and now have so many inside jokes with her. The leaders take turns with each team on the squad, so at some point Cam and Alissa will be with us. I love having our squad leaders because they have so many interesting stories from their time on the field. They stay with each team for about 10 days at a time that way they can visit everyone.
My team has been great so far! Since all we do is stay inside and paint all day, we have a lot of time to talk and get to know each other. At launch, we were told to always be intentional in our relationships with each other because it will change the way we experience our race. We don’t want to do life with warm bodies we barely know; we want to do life with people we know and love. That’s something I’ve really tried to put into play in the way I’m doing life because I don’t want to look back and have regrets. Living in community is hard. You never get any alone time because you do everything together. At the time of writing, I am sitting on my bottom bunk with headphones in having “alone” time. Meanwhile, I am surrounded by 6 other girls on their bunks and on the floor doing their own thing. Every now and then the headphones come out to have “important” conversations (aka laugh at something stupid), but then they go right back in and I’m “alone” again. Being someone who values their alone time, this is taking some getting used to, but it’s going well! After all, we are only 2 weeks into this thing!
